Legendary author, poet and activist Alice Walker joins us to discuss her newest book, "The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way," in which she discusses many of the dominant themes in her life and work, including racism, Palestine, Africa and Obama’s presidency. The collection of essays explores Walker’s conflicting desire for deep engagement in the world...

Dr. Paul Farmer, an infectious diseases expert and a medical anthropologist, is known worldwide for helping to bring quality healthcare to some of the most impoverished areas of the globe. More than 25 years ago, Farmer helped found the charity Partners in Health to provide free medical care in central Haiti. Today, Partners in Health teams up with local groups to treat people with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other conditions in Haiti...

One of Latin America’s most acclaimed writers, Eduardo Galeano is out with the new book, "Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History." Galeano’s classic "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" made headlines when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave President Obama a copy at the Summit of the Americas in 2009. Since its publication in 1971, "Open Veins" has...

We spend the hour with Michael Pollan, one of the country’s leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy. Pollan has written several best-selling books about food, including "The Omnivore’s Dilemma," and "In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto." In his latest book, "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation," Pollan argues that taking back control of cooking may be the single most...

The best-selling Chilean novelist Isabel Allende is out with a new book, "Maya’s Notebook: A Novel." It tells the story of a teenager named Maya Vidal and her struggles with drug addiction, grief and history. Although a work of fiction, the story is rooted in real-life tragedy. Three of Allende’s stepchildren have struggled with addiction: Two of them have died of drug-related causes, one in 1994 and the other just a...

As pressure grows for President Obama to close the Guantánamo military prison, we speak with British journalist Victoria Brittain, who has closely covered the military prison for years. Her latest book is "Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror." "Some of the women that I’ve written about are the wives of Guantánamo prisoners. One, in particular, who is like chapter one of the book, is one of my closest...

As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, we turn the second part of our interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield." Scahill charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, in countries from Somalia to Pakistan. "I called it 'Dirty Wars' because, particularly in this...

The Obama administration’s assassination of two U.S. citizens in 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old Denver-born son Abdulrahman, is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield." The book is based on years of reporting on U.S. secret operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained...

Father Michael Lapsley is a former South African anti-apartheid activist who has turned his personal tragedy into a clarion call for peace and forgiveness. In 1990, three months after the release of Nelson Mandela, the ruling de Klerk government sent Father Lapsley a parcel containing two religious magazines. Inside one of them was a highly sophisticated bomb. When Lapsley opened the magazine, the explosion blew off both of his hands,...

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